When looking at our solar system, the planets going around the sun seem to be set up in a pretty organized fashion. They are all orbiting in the same direction, and exist on a roughly flat planetary plane.

This is because the planets formed billions of years ago from a flat cloud of gas and dust that orbited around the sun. As these materials started to come together due to gravity, the planets were formed.

While this explains much of what we see, astronomers say that the position and motion of the planets is not exactly what they would expect given what we know about their formation.

Some experts explain that this may happen due to the gravitational interactions between the planets, which can cause them to shift positions, speeds, and other factors.

A new paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, however, suggests another explanation.

The researchers propose that rather than having the position of the planets explained by gravity within the solar system, it could have been caused by a massive object that traveled through the solar system many years ago.

This object, the authors of the paper propose, would have had to be somewhere between 2 and 50 times more massive than Jupiter. If an object of this size flew through the solar system and got within 20 astronomical units (an astronomical unit is the distance between the Sun and the Earth) of the center, it would explain what astronomers see today.

Researchers from this paper do not make any assumptions as to what this object could have been. A large planet that was ejected from its own solar system is a possible candidate.

In the paper, the researchers say that the estimate that this theory has about a 1 in 100 chance of being correct.

While 1% is pretty low normally, it is actually a high probability when it comes to looking at such complex systems with so many unknown variables.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a second giant hole has opened up on the sun’s surface. Here’s what it means.